


drain all the blood and give the kids a show

by Anonymous



Series: a feeling's not a thing you own [9]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Depression, Fratricide, Gen, Gore, Mild Sexual Content, Self-Harm, Suicide, Sympathetic Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-07
Updated: 2019-11-07
Packaged: 2021-01-25 03:09:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21349270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Patton is dead.Remus doesn't know who his brother is, anymore.
Relationships: Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders & Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders, Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders & Thomas Sanders
Series: a feeling's not a thing you own [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1453462
Comments: 9
Kudos: 43
Collections: anonymous





	drain all the blood and give the kids a show

**Author's Note:**

> i had to edit the first scene because it started getting too sexual and, though i am an adult, i'm very aware that i am putting this in a public space, despite the fact that you need to confirm that you're old enough to read this kind of thing before the archive shows it to you
> 
> if you're a kid, or a teen, because that's still being a baby but your brain and body are going ballistic, please look after yourself. maybe skip this series. if you've read this far, you probably won't
> 
> content warnings this time are...: remus and my headcanon of him being most of thomas's repressed stuff, and that! includes! horniness!!! discussion of the events of the previous story; mostly the shower scene!!! discussion of taking yourself off of medication!!! GORE, and i'm not sure if it's graphic!!!

In the mindscape, Thomas’s conversations and his general life were not of immediate concern to anyone. Well, yeah, they kind of are, a bit, but it’s like how aren’t aware of your own breathing. In, out, in, out, and _yeah_, now you are!

So, it’s kind of like a second stream of constant thought-thought-thought in Remus’s awareness. There’s everything that Thomas is doing, and everything everyone’s doing, and thoughts like throwing spaghetti at a wall and wondering which noodle sticks. Or, well, maybe, but maybe it’s not, because sometimes the mind is big, and scary, and so far out of Thomas’s awareness that it’s more like a sensationless semi-consciousness.

No spaghetti or walls. Just everything. It’s where Remus’s pet project of stringing together every word in the English language together in every possible way would be stored, if it was physical.

But, yeah. Thomas is in therapy. And Remus is eating soggy cereal in an imaginary version of Thomas’s kitchen. Well, some of it is cereal. Cheerios, calamari, and onion rings. Just for kicks, Remus has put real milk in, this time. Actual _cow_ milk, pasteurised and everything! Not human, or dog, or snake, which isn’t really _milk_, but their venom. And that’s not even getting started on the other white liquids he could fill his bowl with!

Cleaning fluids. Get your mind out of the gutter, Remus.

Thomas is talking to that psychologist guy that Remus had hit on last time. He’s good-looking, but not really Thomas’s type. Still, Remus is just about ready to get Thomas to spread his legs for almost anyone. Thomas should probably go out and get laid before it comes down to desperately propositioning men having a midlife crisis in the Wal-Mart bathrooms, or some self-destructive twink with his suicide video on their phone.

And then he’ll go home like a lazy, spent lump, and he’s going to be driving, and he can just take his foot off of the brake and see how long it takes for him to wrap his car around a pole like the world’s shittiest stripper suicide.

Remus turns to glare at Roman.

“_Roman_!”

“What is it?”

And, ugh, Remus just can’t _stand_ that mockingly fake demureness. But, before he can respond, he starts to hear Thomas a bit more clearly.

“…of sorts. I mean, I was in the shower, and Remus just showed up, and I got a bunch of intrusive thoughts that I really don’t want to share. I used to feel like my intrusive thoughts were, like, completely different from how I feel – I mean, not a part of me _at all_ – but now that they’re more focused on self-destruction rather than harming oth-”

“Wait the fuck up,” Remus announces. He thought he was about to pop up in Thomas’s lap, but nope. Dr. Faber has been blessed this day with this deliciously thick ass.

“Remus?” Thomas asks.

“You called?” He pastes a leering smile on his face, and lets it become real.

Under his legs, he feels Dr. Faber shifting back in his seat. Aw, is the poor guy uncomfortable? Maybe Remus can shift _just so_, and brush up against him until they’re both rutting desperately, like the two trucks in that one song.

“Hey, Thomas, remind me to look up Transformers porn when we get home,” he says.

Thomas flinches, his face wrinkling with revulsion. “Yeah, no, I’m not going to do that.”

Dr. Faber wriggles a little more, then ejects Remus from his lap and onto the floor. Remus bounces a little bit until he skids, stopping at Thomas’s feet.

“You were talking about me?” asks Remus, after a second too long of too much silence.

“I believe that Thomas was discussing your behaviour in the shower, yesterday,” says Dr. Faber.

Remus blinks.

“_Record scratch_?” he enunciates, drawing out the syllables in what’s almost a tune. A second later, he lets out a wordless noise of confusion. “Yeah, no, you’ve lost me. You want me in the shower?”

Thomas shakes his head. “No, I mean, you were _in_ there with me, and it was _weird_.”

“Look, Thomas, let me level with you, here,” he says, rearranging his legs and angle so that he can comfortably sit and see both his centre and the other guy. “I have no fucking clue what you’re talking about.”

Sputtering, Thomas responds, “I was in the shower! And you came in, a-and…”

When Thomas doesn’t continue speaking, Remus groans, slumping his entire body backwards. “And _what_? Secrets, secrets are no fun; tell me, little Tommy-gun!”

He watches as Thomas’s face flushes from humiliation, rather than something more fun. Again, he needs to get laid. But Thomas still doesn’t speak! It’s like he’s embarrassed about telling his thoughts to the worst part of himself!

Oh, yeah, and there’s a therapy guy over there.

Remus quite literally launches himself up to straddle Thomas, placing his hands on his centre’s shoulders. He looks down, meeting Thomas’s dull eyes, and licks his lips in the way that he would before kissing anyone who let him.

Thomas turns his head away. Remus tries to ignore that weird feeling in his gut.

“Whisper it in my ear!” Remus exclaims, before dropping his volume to a murmur. “I won’t tell if you don’t want me to.”

A second later, he frowns at how disgustingly sincere he sounded.

But Thomas’s hot breath is in Remus’s ear and trailing down his neck, and he’s speaking, soft and wet with swallowed saliva and sweat. About the same shudder that shook his body whenever Remus appears that had run through him, and the thoughts, of kissing and friction and dying with no dignity or pride, and barely any pleasure. About how Thomas withstood those thoughts, and asked for the soap; he’d asked _Remus_ for the soap, by name. Then, in the clean and dry, the person who wasn’t Remus had pinned him to the shower wall, and Thomas had been certain that he was going to die.

Remus wonders, then, how long it had been since the thought of death had swept through him with the same sensation as jumping off a swing at its highest point, because he’s finally noticing its absence.

“And then, you gave me butterfly kisses, all down my neck, and left. When I got out of the shower, you were gone, but my skin was still crawling,” Thomas admits. When Remus draws back, he sees Thomas scratch down the side of his throat, leaving thin white lines trailing after his fingernails. Maybe he could spend all of his savings on cocaine. Maybe that would make him happy.

He doesn’t think about it, when he takes Thomas’s hand, intertwining their fingers and squeezing. A second later, Remus realises what he’s doing and drops the hand. It is still attached to Thomas, however, and does not fall on the floor.

“Well done, Thomas!” he grins, as if he can save his own reputation or something. Like there’s anything to save, and like he matters, and-

The neurotic, manic tension that had built up in him fades suddenly, and he can feel a different tension take over his body. While the muscles in his face relax, the space between his shoulders grows taut.

He doesn’t drop his smile.

“Say, Thomas,” he says, clambering down onto his own feet, so he doesn’t cup the centre’s face in some weird display of affection, designed for gentle comfort rather than instant gratification. “Thomas, the Side in the shower with you. That guy, did you see his face?”

Thomas shakes his head. “I was thinking of how gross he looked, or, well, he was. Thinking of how gross I look.”

“You don’t look gross. You look like you,” Remus blurts, then slams his hand over his mouth, completely of his own accord.

After a moment of tense, awkward eye contact, Thomas continues. “It was the same feeling as I get with you. I know how you all feel.”

Remus raises an eyebrow. He’s not made for this kind of adventure through feelings-land, or whatever. He’s supposed to bring the thoughts, of sugar plums and building bombs and everything that Ethan had repressed. Every impulse of pleasure and pain, and games with chains. Every spark of scientific curiosity that Logan had put aside after a bout with Morality.

He’s not built for sentiment. He’s built for hurt, and the things mistaken for it. He’s the cockroach – hah, _cock_-roach – of Thomas’s brain. He’s every unkillable thought that swirls like shit in a clogged toilet.

“And how’s that feel?” Dr. Faber asks. That’s what Ethan or Logan would ask. Now, those are two very feelsy Sides, no matter how much they deny it.

Remus doesn’t think he could deny something, even if he tried to.

“Logan feels kind of cold, but it’s usually refreshing. A bit like peppermint toothpaste, kind of,” Thomas replies. His eyes are closed, and his voice is like the murmur from before, only a little bit louder. “Virgil feels the same way you feel when you realise you left the stove on, you know? But only for a moment. Ethan feels like trust, like, the feeling when you trust someone. And Roman…”

After several long moments of silence, Remus figures that it’s time to pipe up.

“And what does my dearest twinsy feel like, Thomas?” he goads, pouting out a smirk. “Since you didn’t care to see whether your shower stranger had a moustache or not. How does he feel?”

Thomas blinks. “I… I don’t remember.”

“You remember feeling refreshed, and anxious, and trusting, though, Thomas,” says Dr. Faber. “That’s very good. Earlier, you said that you felt like you couldn’t feel emotions, but you’ve just proven yourself wrong.”

“What does Roman feel like?”

Thomas gives no sign of having heard the doctor.

“Remus, I… Ethan!”

At Thomas’s cry, Ethan rises through the ground and takes two long strides to balance on the side of Thomas’s chair, holding his head to his chest.

“I was having a good day,” whispers Thomas, after a minute of dry, heaving sobs.

“Well, now that we’ve identified Roman as the creepy shower guy who’s taking over my job, which. You know. That should have been obvious,” Remus tells the room at large, “can I go?”

“You weren’t,” Ethan replies to Thomas, his voice deepening into Thomas’s low range, gentle and warm.

Remus watches as Thomas looks at Dr. Faber, and watches his lips as they move around the words, “I threw out my medication. Flushed it all down the toilet. I tried to rip the skin off of my chest.”

“Let’s start with the medication,” says Dr. Faber. “Do you no longer want to take it?”

“Yes,” says Thomas. “Wait, no! I don’t know.”

The doctor is patient in a way that Remus isn’t. Remus wants to scream and slap Thomas, and demand for him to spill his guts, metaphorically, because the thought of doing it literally feels like a too-familiar face weighed down with a bitter snarl of a smile. Ethan is gentle, and soft, and he doesn’t drawl out sarcasm like he’s meant to. There isn’t a hint of mockery when he reassures Thomas with blatant untruths.

“I started to feel hopeful, a bit,” Thomas quietly admits. “It was like, I felt like things could maybe get better, and Talyn and Joan could sleep without me wedged between them, because they wouldn’t be worried that I’ll get up in the middle of the night and try to off myself. Did you know that they do that?” He pauses to release a bitter little laugh. “They’re _that_ worried about me. I hate it. So, I felt hopeful, and I tore it down before it could get any stronger. And then I couldn’t think, so I don’t really remember, but I think I wanted Patton, and I was hurting myself.”

“Virgil sarcastically suggested that Thomas should harm himself, but Thomas has no memory of this.” Logan speaks as he rises through the floor. Yeah, he _is_ a pretty minty guy. “It is possible that Thomas was aware, subconsciously, of a part of himself telling him to self-harm.”

“I’ll take the blame,” says Virgil, appearing next to Remus with his hands in his pockets and his hood pulled over his head. “But, seriously, Thomas, _I’m so sorry_.”

“I don’t blame you,” Thomas replies, flexing the fingers of the hand that wasn’t clutching at Ethan in a grabby motion at Logan. Logan approaches, only to have his hand caught by Thomas’s, as the centre continues, “I don’t blame anyone but myself.”

Virgil snorts. “That’s my point.”

Nobody responds to him, but, rather, they continue their conversation from before.

Remus sinks back into Thomas’s head.

* * *

“You were fucking with him,” Remus says.

“I was just being a normal Side, hanging out with my centre,” responds Roman, sounding almost lazy.

Why the fuck is he so put-together? He’s dressed like Thomas was, in the video with Malinda, where he was an evil king.

_Fucking hell_ – literally, sticking your dick into the fires of hell and taking cockwarming to a whole new level – Remus’s brother is a cliché walking.

“You’re taking over my job, wannabe-Scar.”

Roman raises an eyebrow, turning in his imaginary armchair to look at Remus face-to-face. “Because you’re doing _such_ a good job of it right now.”

“Yeah, no, I’m not!” Remus waves his arms for emphasis. “Because you’re taking it!”

With a spin, Roman’s costume fades away to be replaced by familiar black fabric, buttoned up with baby teeth. There’s one of Remus’s old eyeballs, perched on Roman’s shoulder and still glistening, as if it were plucked from its socket only a minute ago.

Remus hisses through his teeth, “_You bastard_!”

In a moment, he has his morning-star in his hand, and he’s spinning it, trying to build up momentum. Roman draws his katana, rushing forwards to land the first hit, but it’s knocked aside by the morning-star’s spinning shaft.

In a single squelching hit, Remus watches his brother fall to the floor. His skull is crushed, with bits of brain scattered on the ground in little blood puddles, with bits of bone embedded in the folds of nodes. The white prince costume that he used to always wear is stained with scarlet.

The pain’s unbearable. He’s screaming, loud and raw enough that it might tear his throat up so he can drown in blood. His legs can’t hold him up, so he falls to his knees, hoping that his kneecaps shatter so he can lie in the imaginary space until he doesn’t exist, so he can die in painful penance.

Sides can’t die, they all would have argued once upon a time, but Patton’s proven them wrong, because he always had to be fucking right about _everything_, and how did that happen? Did he fade naturally? Did he fight to stay as real as he could be, or did he let the unknowable nothingness embrace him like a thick bath of raw meat? Raw meat, like Roman is now. Remus could eat him. He always could have eaten him, but he can eat him more easily now, if he wants.

_Does_ he want?

Or, maybe, maybe Patton felt the same way as Roman and the rest of them, on some level, because Thomas wants to die, and, therefore, they all do, in some way. Maybe Patton jumped off a cliff in the darkest corners of Thomas’s imagination, and his broken body faded away to rot and flowers. Maybe he’s still in his room, because maybe his room still exists, and they’ll open it to find his decaying body stinking up the room, hanging from a noose, or in a brown stain of blood, or with vomit dried up in his mouth and throat. Maybe he’d be preserved, just as he was, like Sleeping Beauty, but actually dead.

Roman’s fingers twitch, and his splayed arms draw in closer to his torso. His hands drag through the blood. His own brains squelch between his fingers as he balls his hands into fists. The shoulders tense, and the arms straighten, and Roman pushes himself to his feet.

It’s clumsy, and he can’t seem to hold his head up straight. Remus must have broken his neck, because he can feel the nerves trapped between the bones. He grips the side of his head, his fingers sinking and slipping until he’s got his fingers turned into a fist to grip his skull from the inside and out.

He can see Remus staring; open-mouthed; wide-eyed.

Trembling.

Fearful.

And then he’s seeing himself, and the pain in his head is a dull echo. His neck is definitely broken, yes, because the angle that it shifts at isn’t natural at all, even for a Side. Blood trickles down his face and through his eyebrow, collecting in the little hairs and running down both sides of his left eye. Speaking of hair, some is stuck in between the cracks of his skull and the gaping hole in the side of it.

Roman smiles, and he sees it mirrored on his own face.

Then he’s looking at Remus again.

Remus, who is staring in horror and dragging himself backwards with scrambling hands. Why is he crying? He usually delights in this sort of thing. This should be a dream come true.

With his free hand, he wipes at his cheek. Blood. Not tears.

“You tried to _kill_ me,” he giggles.

Remus tried to kill him. Not his normal Tom-and-Jerry antics with that mace, but…

Roman’s skull is bashed in. It’s fucking _burning_. The sound of his gasp is choked and quiet.

“You tried to kill me.”

Then, “You tried to kill _me_!” he roars.

His voice wobbles and breaks into a giggle. “You _tried_ to kill me!”

Abrupt coldness. “_You_ tried to kill me.”

His mouth opens, and it’s like the words come out of him without any brainpower, which, you know, _fair_.

“You’re my brother, and you tried to kill me. Weren’t we the same, once? Two sides of the same coin; two Sides of the same Side. And then you hated me, and I hated you, but then I got better. I got more like you.”

“You got worse,” Remus breathes, his voice rasping. “Thomas is deteriorating. Everyone says so.”

“Isn’t that what you want?” asks Roman. He uses his other hand to try and adjust his neck to a more comfortable position. “You want him to hurt.”

Remus’s head shakes. Maybe he could shake it so fast that it would fly off, and bounce away into the great wide somewhere. Then, Roman would finger the insides of his throat, and feel all the bumps of his trachea, and whether it was slick with blood, bile, or saliva.

He cries out, “I don’t want him to hurt! I don’t know what I want!”

“Are you fucking _sure_?” Roman yells, his heart pounding beneath his sternum.

“_I want my brother_!” Remus wails. It’s a long cry that would be plaintive if it weren’t such an ugly sound.

Roman grabs him by the throat, and lifts him, and adjusts his own limp head so that they make perfect eye contact.

“Here I am! This is _me_, Remus! This is what I’ve _become_!”

There’s warm liquid oozing from his ears, and Remus doesn’t need to lift a finger to check what it is, because it’s blood. He knows because he’s bleeding from his nose, and he can taste the coppery heat on his tongue when he licks his lips. He swallows a lump of clotted blood that’s blocking up his throat so he can take a breath.

“How can I fix you?” he asks, weak and quavering. “How do I fix this? What do I do? Roman, what do I _do_?

Roman’s chest is fluttering with abandoned half-laughs that come from hiccupping sobs, and so is Remus’s. Eyebrows are almost drawn into triangles, in upside-down V’s that etch frown-lines into the flesh of their foreheads. They’re smiling, or their lips are contorted like ovals trying to be figure-eights.

“You _don’t_,” he chokes out, like the bitterness is dried vomit in his throat. “There’s no creative way to come up with a solution, Remus; believe me, I _tried_. I tried so fucking _hard_, Remus, and it’s just the same as not trying at all.”

Silence weighs on him. It weighs on them both. It’s so heavy that they could be crushed, literally, because it may only be make-believe, but _everything_ is make-believe for them. They’re pretend people who are better at personhood than the one who made them up, and who _they_ make up.

“There’s no brother,” says Roman, in a phrase that doesn’t really make any sense.

But that’s okay. Nothing makes sense anymore.

“It’s just us,” he murmurs.

Remus’s hand rests on his shoulder, and Roman holds it there. Remus’s other hand helps Roman to hold his broken head up, cupping his cheek in some weirdly normal form of affection.

“We’re the same, aren’t we?”

Remus’s voice is quiet as he asks the question.

Roman doesn’t nod, because that would require him to move his arm in a weird way, and it’s already a little sore just from holding his skull up.

“I think so,” he says, instead.

“I’m sorry,” says Creativity.

“I don’t regret it at all.”


End file.
